Dina Krunic

draft

Abstract
The Free University in Berlin, conceived by the architectural firm Candilis-Josic-Woods, raises questions about how social and
utopian agendas emerged over an extended design process. This article analyzes how the architects conceptually linked the
ideas of “stem” and “web” to establish the unified concept of “groundscraper.” It also investigates the urban and environmental
issues raised by the architects’ intentions to instigate socio-political change. Beginning with the initial diagrammatic proposal,
through the development of a site strategy, to the final construction of the building, Candilis, Josic, and Woods explored the
urban issues that grew out of their active participation in the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and, later,
in meetings of a splinter group known as Team 10. From its inception, the Free University project encouraged exchanges
among different disciplines, resulting in a heterogeneous, multilevel grid that increased urban density at the site. Linking
stem with web in the groundscraper concept at the Free University building culminated in a hybrid connecting the high-rise
structure to the ground in a manner that unites architecture with social sciences, engineering, and urbanism.

ARRIS 30 § Volume 23 § 2012

 draft
The “Groundscraper”:
Candilis-Josic-Woods
and the Free University
Building in Berlin,
1963-1973
Dina Krunic
The Senate of West Berlin launched the Free University
competition in 1963. The university aimed to provide
ample work space for 3,600 students and multiple
departments, including philology, literature, and
history, with additional arts and sciences faculties on
a thirty-acre site. The mayor of the city described the
building as “giving West Berlin’s university a symbol
of freedom, flexibility and openness.”1
Shadrach Woods, collaborating with Georges
Candilis and Alexis Josic and with the German architect
Manfred Schiedhelm, won the competition. The group
explored the theme of “the University for Greater
Numbers” and advanced their previously established
concepts of “stem” and “web,” on which they elaborated
as part of Team 10, a splinter group that emerged from
the 9th Congress of CIAM, and on which Woods wrote
just before the opening of the competition.
The Free University building site drawings from
1965-66 demonstrate that Candilis, Josic, and Woods
mapped out their concepts of stems, street-driven
urban growth, and webs, a polycentric organizing
building system based on circulation patterns, so as
to integrate both the surrounding context and the
existing transportation infrastructure into a network
including the academic building. The organizational
principle of “groundscraper,” a system for horizontal
urban densification with continuous circulation,
was a conceptual model that permeated both the
architectural sketches and the urban planning
proposal.2 The team was led by Woods, whose
interest in urbanism dominated the discussions
until his premature death in 1973.3 It is therefore
no surprise that the Free University building in
post-war Berlin displayed an unprecedented degree
of incremental planning and zoning derived from
urban design. However, the conceptual diagram for
the groundscraper has not, until now, been explored
by scholars. To be sure, many of the architects’
propositions evident at the University in Zurich
(1967) and in their Puzzle Houses, Boat Houses, and
Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 31
Dina Krunic
draft
Meccano Axes structure in Barcarés-Leucatte, France
(1969), mediated the horizontal densification so as to
maintain natural resources along the open circulation
patterns and maximize social interaction. The
groundscraper operated as a central concept that drove
the development of the projects. As an architectural
theory, it was inherently interdisciplinary, mediating
environmental, contextual, and socio-political
interests in the fast-growing, sprawling urban settings
of 1960s Europe.
The 1963 competition entry consisted of sketches,
site-plan diagrams, plans, and sections, in addition to
the architects’ statement of intent. It also contained
a storyboard, presenting the ideas culminating in the
groundscraper concept (Fig. 1). The original entry could
be described as an oversimplified, pure, diagrammatic,
idealized version of complex architectural concepts
(Fig. 2); the final design was developed during a ten-
year elaboration of the initial proposal.
Two years after they won the competition, the
intermediate design proposal drawings from 1965-
66 show that Candilis, Josic, and Woods used the
groundscraper as a site planning strategy to expand
their architectural concepts. At that point, they
included a new site plan indicating vehicular and
mass transit networks that integrated their proposal
into the surrounding urban environment. Even
though the architects did not explicitly elaborate on
the groundscraper concept after the initial proposal
was submitted, the site planning strategy may be seen
to apply the organizational principles on an urban
scale. As the groundscraper diagram indicates, the
urban proposal at this stage suggests “giving the
minimum organization necessary to an association
of disciplines” by removing “planes of isolation” and
allowing no vertical site densification assisted with
elevators or escalators (Fig. 1).
As drawn in the intermediate design from 1965-
66, the completed building of 1973 also implemented
the groundscraper concept. Even though only about a
ARRIS 32 § Volume 23 § 2012
quarter of the original proposal was constructed, this
relatively small portion exhibits the characteristics
of the groundscraper diagram from the competition
panel: ramps and staircases rather than elevators
connect the different floor levels; outdoor and indoor
spaces flow seamlessly into each other; and public
spaces are integrated into the circulation matrix.
In the caption for the intermediate drawing, the
architects argue for an urban and social restructuring
where “greater possibilities of community and
exchange are present” (Fig. 1).4
The ten-year design process attests to the
importance of the groundscraper concept. Through
stems and webs, Candilis, Josic, and Woods applied
critical social concerns to architecture, whereas
through the groundscraper they expanded the scope
of work to include urban, environmental, and
contextual explorations that demonstrated their
concern for human behavior.
Historical and social context
The design of the Free University building in Berlin
has entered the discourse of architectural history as a
model for educational and social restructuring. The
building is a tribute to the changing political and
social agendas of European educational institutions
in the period preceding the student revolts of 1968.
As a consequence of socio-economic changes, rapidly
growing population, and dwindling institutional
structures in the 1960s, European universities
were pressured to reform. At the time, the more
conventional model for academic buildings was
the skyscraper. Henry Van de Velde Boekentoren’s
work at Ghent University (1933) and Charles
Klauder’s Cathedral of Learning at the University of
Pittsburgh (1937) explored the skyscraper typology.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in his master plan for
the Illinois Institute of Technology (1946), opted for
individual multistory university buildings separated
draft Dina Krunic

Figure 1
Free University Berlin, competition,
explanatory diagram, building concept,
1963.
[Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods; Building
for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 208].

Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 33

Dina Krunic
draft
Figure 2
Candilis¬-Josic¬-Woods Free University Berlin, competition entry, 1963.
[Tom Avermaete. Another Modern : The Post-War Architecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), 322-323].
by streets. Additional projects, such as the UTS
Tower in Australia (1964), or Jo van den Broek and
Jaap Bakema’s Faculty of Architecture building at
TU Delft (1970), were only some of the high-rise
university buildings that were built during the 1960s
to accommodate the rising number of students. The
increase in student enrollment and the need for
greater communication between disciplines offered
a platform for Candilis, Josic, and Woods to depart
from the current model. They managed not only to
respond successfully to the educational and social
demands presented in the competition brief, but also
to propose a disciplinary shift in architecture towards
greater communication, wider interaction, and urban
densification. According to architectural historian
Tom Avermaete, they also were able to combine the
mass culture and mass production of modernism
with a humanistic focus on everyday life.5 Avermaete
together with Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo
Tafuri use the Free University building to explore
the relationship between modernity and tradition.6
Other scholars, such as Bénédicte Chaljub, Karl
ARRIS 34 § Volume 23 § 2012
Kiem, and Gabriel Feld, consider the Free University
building in the context of technological innovation,
where the assembly-line production and the logic of
modernism are replaced by collaboration.7 However,
by looking at the Free University’s design as it emerged
over a decade, one finds that, as a team, Candilis,
Josic, and Woods repositioned the discipline of
architecture as the mediator between two divergent
paths: the static socio-political structure on the
one hand and the dynamic progressive impulse in
urbanism on the other.8
Candilis, Josic, and Woods held productive
discussions at Team 10 meetings. Team 10 was a
group of individuals who splintered from the CIAM
congresses. The group was concerned with the same
issues as CIAM, such as in the changing demands
of modern society, but was dissatisfied with the
direction that CIAM congresses were taking. Team
10 re-evaluated the supremacy of transportation and
the aesthetics of modernism in post-war Europe that
CIAM members supported. Candilis, Josic, and
Woods were part of both CIAM and Team 10 from
 draft
the beginning. As apprentices in Le Corbusier’s office,
Candilis and Woods took part in CIAM gatherings
and contributed to the development of the grid, a
representation system that allowed comparative
analysis. After World War II, Candilis and Woods
met Josic in the ATBAT (Atelier des Bâtisseurs), a
research center founded by Le Corbusier, where
architects, engineers, and technicians worked in
an interdisciplinary fashion. In 1953, the three
architects founded the partnership and instigated
Team 10’s separation from CIAM. Within the
Team 10 discourse, they developed the idea of the
habitat évolutif (roughly, the changing habitat)
and introduced growth, change, and mobility into
traditional building models.
The Free University building came to represent
the principles of both Team 10 and Candilis, Josic,
and Woods. In addition, the Berlin project inherited
technological innovations from Jean Prouvé’s flexible
and interchangeable façade panels. However, the
team’s actual contribution extends well beyond
devising a strong formal language or integrating new
technologies. Responding to the pressures of urban
population growth, the architects replaced the existing
university building paradigm with structures based
on social needs. For instance, they experimented
with Le Corbusier’s geometrical, modular system,
which allowed for spatial variations and socio-
political change. With its up-to-date populist agenda,
the Free University building modified traditions so as
to implement technological innovations. Moreover,
the Free University building functions fully within
urban transport networks because it is a microcosm
of a city. While urban planning was already included
in the modernist schemes, such techniques of city
design were not hitherto simultaneously applied to a
building and its immediate surroundings. Candilis,
Josic, and Woods became instigators of change,
negotiating the shifting urban, social, and political
contexts.
Dina Krunic
Architectural concepts: stem, web
and groundscraper
Writing about architecture and inventing theories
was as important to the Candilis, Josic, and
Woods collaboration as drawing and constructing
buildings. With a background in philosophy
and literature, Shadrach Woods wrote, lectured,
and introduced projects publicly on behalf of the
group. His conceptual explorations explicate the
team’s theoretical and socio-political agenda in the
seminal articles “Stem” and “Web.”9 The allied
concepts of cell, cluster, stem, and web appealed
to Team 10 participants, since they embodied an
alternative to both traditional urban techniques and
those proposed by modernists.10 Woods’s concepts
were precise and extensively elaborated but also
open to interpretation, much like Team 10’s. At
that time, flexibility was on everyone’s mind: Aldo
Van Eyck’s call to find a form for mass society,
Bakema’s search for a counterform, Alison and Peter
Smithson’s insistence on part-to-whole relationships.
Candilis, Josic, and Woods persistently searched for
an aesthetic language that differentiated the Free
University from other Team 10 projects. In the Free
University, the main concepts of stem and web seem
to blend together into a coherent whole, known as a
mat-building, as defined by Alison Smithson. More
so, this mat-building “based on interconnection,
close-knit patterns of association, and possibilities
for growth” generates a building’s urban equivalent
known as the groundscraper.11
I. Stem
In “Stem,” an article published in Architectural
Design in 1960, Shadrach Woods underlines the
stem concept and launches a critique of the urban
planning techniques prevalent in France at the
time.12 He insists on embedding urban design
Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 35
Dina Krunic
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in real circumstances amid new parameters that
require flexibility and change. Instead of outlining
the building envelope as the basis for an urban plan,
Woods proposes that the stem, which resembles a
capillary distribution system, become the driving
tool. This tool connects a building directly to
the end of the smallest street, and allows for a
continuous extension into any neighborhood.
Woods suggests that urban forms should be analyzed
and understood through the varied notions of
mobility and modification. The stem is an attempt
to capture formal characteristics of a street for a new
concept of urban design, which would allow change
and growth.
One of the main structuring elements of the
urban realm is the stem.13 Mobility was of interest
to architects of that time as a means to make urban
planning into “urbanism as the science responsible
for the growth and development of the city.”14 Many
Team 10 participants were faced with the challenge
of finding an alternative to the ordinary street.
Unlike Le Corbusier, who in “La Rue” (1929),
attacked the traditional street for being no more
than a trench, a deep cleft, a narrow passage, and
who, in the Athens Charter destroyed the outdated
“corridor street,” Georges Candilis in 1962 made a
plea to “re-establish the notion of the street.”15 He
asked that the urban fabric be defined around the
coherence of a linear void.16 Candilis’s definition
of a street was not an unusual concept, when we
consider traditional non-European streets displayed
in Bernard Rudofsky’s “Architecture without
Architects” exhibit of 1964, but it was an innovative
concept for one of Le Corbusier’s apprentices. With
their reaffirmation of the street, Candilis, Josic, and
Woods adopted mobility as the instigator of urban
change and as an axis that generated urban growth.
The stem was a device that structured dwellings and
produced architectural form, as well as structuring
urban development.
ARRIS 36 § Volume 23 § 2012
II. Web
Not long after Woods designed important projects in
Caen-Herouville, France (1961), Asua Valley- Bilbao,
Spain (1961), Toulouse-Le-Mirail , France (1961),
and Fort-Lamy, France (1962), all of which elaborated
on the stem principle, the architect published
another important article entitled “Web” in Le Carré
Bleu in 1962. 17 Here, Woods introduces the most
comprehensive structuring concept for the urban
realm: the web. As the alternative to traditional urban
tissue, the web concept invokes the shift in Woods’
s thinking from geometries to activities. Woods
unites architecture and planning when discussing
the organization of interconnected places that invite
a wide range of activities. According to Woods, the
web is a polycentric environmental system in that
many individual actions focus attention on peripheral
locations. “It is a way to establish a large-scale order
which, by its existence, makes possible an individual
expression at the smaller scale.”18
Team 10 participants thought seriously about
rapid urbanization and building for the masses.
For them, ordering systems were a necessity, which
neither the uniform modernist grid nor the war-torn
urban center could satisfy. After World War II, cities
underwent rapid transformation, and the known
instruments for achieving urban density had to be
revised.19 The modernist grid did not allow enough
flexibility and mobility for the rapidly growing
society. Woods’s web was an investigation into
different practices and programs that could be woven
into a continuous pattern without limits. The web
was a system more homogeneous than the stem--it
was a “stem to the next degree,” permitting limitless
development of an area unified by a circulation
network. The web operates at both human and urban
scales but also provides flexibility in planning for a
range of functions over time.20 To ensure its longevity,
the web was to be constructed in spread-out stages,
 draft
subject to revision over time. Explored in projects
such as the Toulouse-le-Mirail project, France (1963)
and Frankfurt-Romerberg, Germany (1963), the web
found its physical form somewhere between a three-
dimensional grid and a network of circulation paths.
III. Groundscraper
By 1963, when the competition for the Free University
building took place, the stem and the web were
well-known concepts among Team 10 participants.
Through their writings and in Team 10 meetings,
Candilis, Josic, and Woods placed modernist ideas
under critical scrutiny: they rethought the street,
the city, and the grid. Even though concepts such
as stem and web provoked ample criticism from
planners, architects, politicians, and sociologists,
they were merely formal and conceptual architectural
provocations that did not directly challenge urban
infrastructure. Zoning regulations, urban density
models, transportation systems, and the social
discourse, largely inherited from the modernist era,
were still intact.
As a result of the CIAM conferences, the scope
of architecture was broadened to include urban
planning and the wider problems of the city.21 Much
like other CIAM and Team 10 members, Candilis,
Josic, and Woods inherited the city as a model
through which to re-conceptualize the built form
by emphasizing the public sphere as in the Greek
polis.22 Unlike their contemporaries, they emphasized
linking the public and private domain by including
landscape elements that connected the two realms.
In the Free University proposal, Candilis, Josic, and
Woods balanced concerns for privacy with their
commitment to civic space, a topic often neglected
by modernists. In contrast to the vertical high rise,
a horizontal skyscraper integrated with the ground
maintains density but loses the planes of isolation,
while encouraging activity, mobility, and integration.
Dina Krunic
Candilis, Josic, and Woods named this new socio-
political concept of structural organization the
groundscraper.
“In a groundscraper organization, greater
possibilities and community and exchange are present
without necessarily sacrificing any tranquility,” the
architects wrote on the competition panel for the Free
University (Fig. 1).23 Unlike their previous concepts,
the groundscraper reframed the debate over many
existing urban planning issues, including density,
transportation, zoning, and social integration. Besides
explicitly advancing the groundscraper as the model
for social re-structuring, they presented an alternative
to vertical skyscrapers, thought to be the only
model for accommodating the growing population.
Candilis, Josic, and Woods attempted to capture the
spatial and functional principles of the traditional
European city within the urban density of a skyscraper
without producing vertical separation. Mechanical
transportation systems that allow vertical expansion,
such as elevators and escalators—unnecessary in
this concept—removed modernist dependency on
machines and encouraged pedestrian movement.
The zoning division within the groundscraper was
neither related to the ground it occupied nor to the
functions it contained but to circulation paths, which
unified the zones both vertically and horizontally.
These ideas about the urban scale are evident as much
in the initial diagram of the groundscraper as in the
intermediate design drawings of 1965-66, and finally
in the completed building.
The groundscraper developed out of Woods’s
web and proceeded to gain expression in a series of
proposals by Candilis, Josic, and Woods. Alison
Smithson attributed the Free University building’s
success to the team’s ability to formalize a mat-
building concept. In “How to Recognize and
Read Mat-Building, Mainstream Architecture as
It Developed Towards the Mat-Building” of 1973,
written immediately after the Team 10 meeting at the
Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 37
Dina Krunic
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completed Free University building, she turns to the
metaphor of the mat to describe the newly completed
masterpiece. Smithson points out that the dense
urban overlay and smaller-scale variations in the
building are essential characteristics of the web. The
mat epitomizes two different tendencies: one being
urbanistic and the other redefining the interior.24
The dictionary definition of “mat” is “a flat
article, woven or plaited;… any dense or twisted
growth…a matrix.” Smithson implied that an
interior characterized as a mat has the quality of
textiles evident in the interwoven layers of the Free
University building.25 However, one might question
whether Smithson captured the architects’ intentions.
Woods, the theoretician for the group, missed the
opening of the Free University building due to illness
and died soon thereafter. It is unclear how Woods
would have responded to Smithson’s metaphoric
association of the Free University with the mat.
Indeed, the groundscraper concept as demonstrated
ARRIS 38 § Volume 23 § 2012
in the competition diagrams of 1963 and the later
developmental site drawings (1965-66) suggests that
Smithson’s interpretation of the Free University as an
architectural interior is less important than the full
integration of the building with its urban context.
stem, web and groundscraper:
Competition Drawings (1963)
The Free University in Berlin was based on the
previously realized stem proposal for Toulouse de
Mirail, France (1961) and a previous unrealized web
competition scheme for the city center in Frankfurt-
Romerberg, Germany (1963) (Fig. 3). The initial
proposal, as discovered in the Toulouse de Mirail
project, was that stems gave equal importance to
creating private spaces with universal characteristics
and to the overall decentered organization. To
advance the stem concept and to initiate discussion
on grids at a 1963 meeting of the Team 10,
Figure 3
Model, Frankfurt-¬Romerberg
competition entry, 1963.
[Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building
for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 205].
 draft
Woods presented the Frankfurt-Romerberg Center
competition project, which was based on a three-
level grid, later named the web. In this project,
Candilis, Josic, and Woods sought to balance the
formal naiveté with the intellectual sophistication
of the modernist grid. Even given the conceptual
and intellectual framework of the web, an awkward
connection to the adjacent existing structures in the
Frankfurt-Romerberg proposal exposed the formal
simplicity of this three-dimensional grid (Fig. 4).
In the Free University proposal, this awkwardness
disappeared, as the neutral setting of the almost flat
Berlin site fostered the intellectual sophistication of
the three-level grid. Woods, referring to the web of
primary and secondary circulation paths, describes
Figure 4
(Left) Circulation and open spaces, Frankfort-Romerberg project 1963, and
(right) circulation and open spaces at the Free University, 1963.
[Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 206, 207, 211].
Dina Krunic
the Free University building as “not a mega-structure
but rather a minimal structuring organization”
that allows the project to grow and change.26 At a
1964 seminar in Berlin, Woods compared the Free
University project’s three-level grid system to the
Frankfurt competition entry; however, because of
the easy integration with the city core, the pedestrian
circulation grid at the Free University provided an
organizational system for the site.27
Besides having the flexibility to expand, the Free
University proposal put into action the concepts of
stem and web together with the groundscraper scheme.
The groundscraper not only provides for greater
density and faster access to different planes, but it also
allows the scheme to continue without predetermined
Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 39
Dina Krunic
draft
outcomes (Fig. 1). In Woods’s description of the
competition entry, this lack of perfection sets forth
“the unstable state of becoming.”28 The groundscraper
seems to open up the potential for growth and change
without limits, finally satisfying the goals in Woods’s
writings on both stem and web.
To accommodate the interdisciplinary character of
institutions, the Free University integrated numerous
functions and users. Candilis, Josic, and Woods worked
under the premise that the principal function of the
university was “to encourage exchange and intellectual
regeneration between people in different disciplines,
so as to enlarge the field of human knowledge and
increase man’s control over his collective and individual
activities.”29 This approach challenged departmental
divisions by providing multiple uses for spaces (Fig.
1). The grid acted as a groundscraper: minimal
organization provided maximum opportunities for
contact, exchange, and feedback without compromising
the tranquility of individual work. Most of the public
venues, such as exhibition spaces, auditoriums, large
lecture halls, lounges, cafes, shops, libraries, lecture
rooms, and seminars, are located along the “four main
servicing spines” and connected by secondary paths
that hold offices and smaller classrooms. Spaces were
allocated vertically on the basis of efficiency and the
frequency of activity. The principal building services
are underground for easy vehicular access. While the
ground floor is designed for most activities, the upper
floor houses smaller classrooms, work rooms, libraries,
and offices. The fourth floor was intended for accessible
rooftops and housing. In the initial design, parking was
not provided, according to Woods, as it had become
clear that “the exigencies of the auto are incompatible
with the economics of building.”30
The winning design was praised for its flexibility,
since the plan met the university’s demands for multiple
possibilities in the unpredictable future.31 The variable
use of proposed spaces ensured different functional
and programmatic schemes, from the public areas to
ARRIS 40 § Volume 23 § 2012
intimate spaces for different departments and their
annexes. Candilis, Josic, and Woods proposed direct
pedestrian connection to the main existing university,
as well as to a green zone (Fig. 5). The low-rise buildings
and the circulation pathways leading to the existing
public transportation system bring the building into
close contact with the region and its tradition. The
Free University “[has] been carried beyond the level
required for [its] performance… to satisfy some inner
notion of perfection,” an imbedded quality that Alison
Smithson suggests goes beyond the architects’ intent
and connects the building to the historical lineage of its
site.32 The formal perfection of the proposal, admired in
comments accompanying the numerous publications
of the competition entry, instigated a ten-year-long
urban and interdisciplinary exploration.
stem, web and groundscraper:
intermediate site-plan drawings
(1965-66)
As Brian Richards stated with regard to the Free
University, “ten years is a long time to sustain an idea
and only really worthwhile ideas when realized over
this period appear up to date.”33 The initial competition
entry was no less intellectually relevant than the
interim design stages. The long design process, from
winning the competition to execution, was cloaked
in mystery, as documents are scarce and disorganized.
This is no surprise, as working in politically turbulent
postwar Berlin must have been a challenge. However,
the drawings from this period unveil the group’s
socio-political attitudes even as they masked their
ideologies, given the politically sensitive environment.
Especially revealing are the three preserved site-plan
drawings from 1965-66 that indicated the building’s
connection to the rest of Berlin. The delineated
physical and implied boundaries emphasized a direct
connection to the U-Bahn public transportation
network, which spanned all of then-divided Berlin.
 draft
Figure 5
Candilis-Josic-Woods, circulation diagram, Free
University competition entry, 1963.
[Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building
for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 209].
The number of pedestrian pathways at the Free
University site suggests that it was accessible to all.
The urban proposal is a combination of a modernist
street grid and a traditional open public space, where
the planned and accidental pedestrian circulation
intermingles to encourage interaction, and integrates
the everyday life of the neighborhood with the
university students.
Tom Avermaete points out that, in the case of
the Free University, the integration into the existing
neighborhood of Berlin Dahlem seems, at the first
glance, to be rather absent. Yet, Avermaete claims,
closer inspection of the initial competition drawings
reveals a different reading: they illustrate how the
Free University relates to the existing roads in the
neighborhood.34 There may be some indications of
how Candilis, Josic, and Woods intended to connect
the Free University building to the network of streets
and the university structures in the site circulation
diagrams of the competition entry panel. Yet, as
the 1965-66 site drawings suggest, Candilis, Josic,
Dina Krunic
and Woods expanded their urban proposal much
later. Unlike proposals for utopian megastructures,
the site-plan drawings of the Free University show
a strong intent to facilitate urban integration. The
intermediate drawings illustrate the importance
of integrating the ground and site with the Free
University building. In these drawings, Candilis,
Josic, and Woods not only expand their concept of
the groundscraper to increase the density of the whole
neighborhood, but they also suggest an alternative
urban model that integrates ground activity with the
site plan, where the vehicular and, more importantly,
pedestrian circulation determines the location and
the relationships between buildings.
Candilis, Josic, and Woods did not believe in
a suburban model.35 However, the site for the Free
University building was chosen for its central location
in the former West Berlin, which placed the building
in a peripheral, residential, suburban neighborhood
of old Berlin. The premise of the Free University
competition was to instigate the growth of the new
Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 41
Dina Krunic
draft
city center for West Berlin; however, the existing site
in the quiet suburban neighborhood did not allow
for such a drastic shift in urban patterns. In order
to resolve the discussions concerning a suburban-
versus-urban location, Candilis, Josic, and Woods
focused their attention on the groundscraper, an
organizational system mediating the low-rise and
high-density development. Increased density allowed
them to move beyond the traditional, detached-
building development model of the surrounding
area and, at the same time, to propose that low-rise
structures blend into the existing urban context of
single family houses.
The 1965-66 site-plan diagram illustrates the
team’s idea of reformulating suburban Berlin by
challenging the isolated-building concept (Fig. 6).
This drawing shows the grid of newly proposed
pedestrian paths and the boundaries of the site,
where the structure connects with footpaths, parking,
streets, and suburban housing. Whereas the idealistic,
decontextualized competition drawings show a
utopian version of the building, this site-plan diagram
establishes limits, draws connections, and accepts the
site boundaries. However, the 1965-66 diagram is
Figure 6
Candilis-Josic-Woods, Free University, site diagram, 1965-66.
(Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, 1923-2008, Department
of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library,
Columbia University, New York, NY, Temp. Box 1).
ARRIS 42 § Volume 23 § 2012
no less conceptual than the competition entry. The
proposed pathway system resembles Peter Smithson’s
“Play Brubeck” ideogram in the overall shape of the
site and in the use of nodes and overpasses.36 Like
Smithson’s ideogram, which shows points in space
connected by multiple intersecting lines without
any obvious hierarchy, the site plan by Candilis,
Josic, and Woods suggests a web-like constellation of
parts where patterns emerge. In the case of the Free
University, those patterns illustrated human actions
as defined by their circulation paths. In keeping with
Woods’s theory of the groundscraper; the site plan
diagram extends horizontally overlapping planes
and suggests that circulation pathways promote
interactions among people.
Even though buildings are not included in the site
diagram, density was a primary concern. Instead of
marking off individual lots, Candilis, Josic, and Woods
proposed pedestrian pathways to delineate boundaries
between individual parcels, anticipating future growth
across the site. Thus, pathways defining pedestrian
activity separate the inconsistently shaped lots. It is
evident that the subdivision strategy prioritizes densely
spaced, low-rise buildings. As the size of parcels
decreases and the number of nodes increases at the
northern end of the site, it is easy to see how the parcels
become too small to accommodate even an ordinary
residence. One can only imagine the shape of those
structures on the smallest parcels. With no direct street
access to the street which ignores the problem of the
car, these “lots” also suggest a dense living condition of
a traditional city with relatively few vehicles.
As if a skyscraper had been laid onto the ground,
the isolated horizontal planes of a high rise are
transformed into adjacent, vertical blocks distributed
across the site. Much like the groundscraper, this
allowed fast and easy movement between the zones.
Without showing the location of the Free University
building, this diagram defines the zones of different
sizes and shapes as if to suggest that activities would
 draft Dina Krunic

fill the entire complex. Pathways with loose ends,
continuing off the page into oblivion, suggest that
subsequent developments in this neighborhood will
occur along these trajectories. Toward the boundary
of the site, the pedestrian pathways cross roads or
join with preexisting sidewalks. Principles such as
the stems that generated growth and the webs of
connectivity fuse the groundscraper concept with the
complexity of lot division.
Variations between the site diagram and the
site-plan drawings further illuminate the attitude
of Candilis, Josic, and Woods toward the urban
environment. Two development plans from 1965-
66 in Columbia University’s Avery Architectural
and Fine Arts Library attest to the team’s persistence
in linking lot division to the evenly distributed
inhabitation of the site (Figs. 7, 8). Much like the site
diagram, the development plan featured no actual

Figure 7
Candilis-Josic-Woods, Free
University, Berlin, master-plan,
intermediate site-plane drawing,
1965.
(Shadrach Woods Architectural Records
and Papers, 1923-2008, Department
of Drawings & Archives, Avery
Architectural and Fine Arts Library,
Columbia University, New York, NY,
Roll A0008.11).

Figure 8
Candilis-Josic-Woods, Free
University, Berlin, master-plan,
intermediate site-plane drawing,
1966.
(Shadrach Woods Architectural Records
and Papers, 1923-2008, Department
of Drawings & Archives, Avery
Architectural and Fine Arts Library,
Columbia University, New York, NY,
Roll A0008.11).

Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 43

Dina Krunic
draft
buildings as drawn. These site drawings contain only
textual descriptions of the program to be assigned
to each lot, clearly demonstrating that the Free
University project rejected the formal division of
building from ground. This lack of definition for
the built form suggests that the design focused on
pedestrian circulation. Activities are linked across
the main pathways instead of staying within their
vertical lots, so that associated disciplines connect
laterally. For example, the buildings labeled Physics I
and IV, sharing the same lot, are joined with Physics
II and III by a main pedestrian pathway (Fig. 8).
The three architects made every attempt to
increase density without relying on machines; the
car was brought into the site plan with skepticism.
The vertical circular parking structures in the 1965-
66 site plans connect the existing roads with the web
of pedestrian pathways. When Candilis, Josic, and
Woods introduced cars into the design, they proposed
tall, circular parking structures at the edge of the site,
minimizing the imprint of cars at the core. After
inserting the circular parking structures in the plans
produced between 1965 and 1966, the architects
removed the suburban houses from those locations
(Figs. 7, 8).
Cars, thus, delivered some of the desired density
of the groundscraper for the New Berlin city center.
The presence of multiple parking garages facilitated
circulation across the site as people moved from the
parking garages toward the buildings.
stem, web and groundscraper in
the built structure
Filled with tranquil spaces, the Free University
groundscraper in its built form reverberates with small-
town intimacy (Fig. 9). Comfortably small spaces,
narrow corridors, private housing units, diminutive
courtyards, and green roofs with individual benches
attest to Alison Smithson’s interpretation of the Free
ARRIS 44 § Volume 23 § 2012
University building as providing interior architecture
for the exterior. As she points out, “the ‘same’ panels of
the Maison du Peuple can be used to make a building
that can bend and go up and down to modestly follow
its interior streets, as the elements of the language
of classical architecture in Bath were made to serve
a new sort of town-fabric and a new sensibility, is
the F.U.’s achievement.”37 In the scheme as actually
built, stems, webs and groundscraper survived some
alternations to the plan including interventions that
severed connections to existing university buildings,
roads and metro stations. Today, Free University’s
ground level is accessed by ramps and staircases with
evident connections to the outside, as well as to the
green roof. The east-west axis connects with the
original university buildings from 1948. All these
elements attest to a low-rise density, indicating that
the organizational system of the groundscraper has
persisted.
The Free University building can hardly be
described as a building in the traditional sense.38
Bryan Richards describes it as “a city in microcosm
and the ideas in it are ideas for cities.”39 Serge
Chermayeff characterizes it as “an open-ended grid
system accommodating omni-directional growth
in three dimensions.”40 Candilis, Josic, and Woods
described it as “a system where individuals and groups
may determine desirable relationships.”41 The street-
like circulation, leading into linearly aligned offices
and gathering spaces situated along the avenues,
resembles a city more than a building.42
Strolling today down the pedestrian sidewalk
from the Dahlem U­-Bahn metro station, one en-
counters a newly expanded Free University, com-
pleted in 1973 and restored by Foster + Partners in
2005. The third level, initially intended to incorpo-
rate housing units, now holds offices and gardens.
The underground level hides private meeting spaces,
storage spaces, and auxiliary services, so that the
seamlessly functioning city remains above ground.
 draft
As one approaches the current building, four en-
trances and two exits survive from the Candilis-
Josic-Woods groundscraper diagram. Entrances and
exits punctuate the building as often as possible,
seemingly violating the building’s integrity (Fig. 9).
Indeed, the flat terrain of Berlin’s southwest suburb
is the only stable element. One swiftly slips unde-
terred from the dynamic interior into the flat and
bucolic Dahlem neighborhood.
Street-like pathways, designated as stems, weave
across the Free University building’s interior (Fig. 10).
For a visitor, the first contact with the Free University
building leads one to encounter a maze of stems.
Primary and secondary systems of circulation define
the stem network. The primary circulation leads one
directly to public areas, such as the auditoriums,
cafés, lounges, libraries, lecture halls, and exhibition
spaces. There are four primary, parallel stems that are
spaced two-hundred-feet apart. Conceptualized as
Dina Krunic
Figure 9 (Left)
Aerial view, Free University, soon after
completion, 1974.
[Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, Free University, Berlin:
Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects, 3
(London: Architectural Association, 1999), 16].
Figure 10 (Right)
Competition diagram showing circulatory
patterns, primary and secondary stems.
[Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, Free University, Berlin:
Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects, 3,
(London: Architectural Association, 1999), 20].
wide, axial corridors for large groups of students, the
primary corridors are the most active zones. Like busy
streets, the primary stems replace elevators as the main
means of circulation. During the ten-minute interval
between classes, the hallways efficiently distribute
the student body. The secondary system of pathways
runs perpendicular to the primary stems. One leaves
the main corridors to enter into the secondary stem,
passing into narrow and intimate spaces.43 The
secondary stems are one-hundred-feet apart, parallel
to each other, and connect places that require privacy,
such as offices and smaller classrooms. These narrow
corridors that lead the traveler to tranquil areas of
solitude and exclusion also span the primary stems
and unify the fast and the slow movement in a web
of motion.
The intent of Candilis, Josic, and Woods was
to “use the plural because we do not see one ideal
society, but rather a number of societies in a state of
Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 45
 draft
44
becoming.” In the Free University building, they
defined a multitude of experiences as visitors moved
through the primary and secondary stems. Along
the way, ramps and three kinds of stairs provided
vertical connectors. Single-directional staircases run
along ramps like catwalks (Fig. 11). Interior stairs for
egress and outdoor spiral stairs blur the distinction
between interior and exterior. The spiral stairs
provide views onto the surroundings (Fig. 12). As if
they were the diagrammatic, dashed lines from the
groundscraper diagram, these vertical, spiral elements
allow continuous mobility at various speeds and
frequencies.
Candilis, Josic, and Woods included parks,
courtyards, terraces, and green roofs throughout
the Free University building. The groundscraper ties
ARRIS 46 § Volume 23 § 2012
the structure together horizontally into a unified
environment and allows communities to form, so as
to establish areas where “individual and group may
determine desirable relationships,” while retaining
the principles of urban densification in the low-rise
structure. The process leading up to the actualization
of the Free University was one of exploring a vision
for a society where negotiation and interaction was
facilitated by architects.45 The groundscraper’s urban
density remains intact even though the constructed
web of streets might not be as extensive as Candilis,
Josic, and Woods initially envisioned.
After completing the Free University and
returning to New York, Woods stated that “in fact
generally, in northern and western countries we do
not practice democracy, nor do we live in an open
Figure 11
Ramp within primary stem.
[Photograph by Charles Tashima,
in Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson.
Free University, Berlin : Candilis, Josic,
Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects,
3 (London: Architectural Association,
1999), 83].
 draft

a continuously expanding landscape with the density

of a city center but the atmosphere of an open field,
implementing the concept of groundscraper. The
groundscraper, initially proposed in 1963, expanded
to include urban planning in the site plans and
diagram of 1965-66 and was finally built 1973.
The groundscraper in the Free University proposal
mediates architectural, environmental, contextual,
and urban approaches to design with the political
agendas of an educational institution so as to produce
dynamic social change.
Figure 12 As Woods’ famously declared,
Spiral staircases in the small courtyards and the Cor-¬ten covered Enough pretentious verbiage & fraud &
façade with shading mechanisms, [Photograph by Charles Tashima, in Gabriel
Feld and Peter Smithson. Free University, Berlin : Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm.
perversity.
Exemplary Projects, 3 (London: Architectural Association, 1999), 77]. A modest recommendation: When next in
Berlin, go and see the university (Fig. 13).47

society, but rather we hold these up as ideals to be Dina Krunic, is an independent scholar who
revered, while going about the sordid business of received her M.A. and M.Arch. degrees at the University
getting and spending: a business which seems to rely of California at Los Angeles.
entirely upon economic or financial oppression of one
class by another.”46 In keeping with this statement,
the Free University seems to suggest a model for an
open society where the groundscraper realized the
architects’ social model. Indeed, the Berlin complex
provides a model of public and private spaces whose
integration advances democratic ideals.

Groundscraper: a concept for

open society

Confronting mass urbanization and industrial

production, Candilis, Josic, and Woods spent much
of the 1960s working through their concepts of
stem, web and groundscraper. In the Free University
designs, the architects applied their groundscraper
ideas to provide spaces for an open society that
accommodated a wide array of human activities and
Figure 13
interactions facilitated by free pedestrian circulation. Entrance to Free University, Berlin, from Thielallee, 2011.
Their proposal featured what they hoped would be (Photograph by author).

Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 47

Dina Krunic
draft
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library for
allowing access to the Woods archives and to Prof. Gregor Kalas, whose editing
of this article not only fine-tuned the writing but also perfected and enriched the
research.
ENDNOTES
1. Veneta Charlandjeva, “Pérennité d’une utopie” Le Carré Bleu 1 (1999): 4.
2. “We seek rather a system giving the minimum organization necessary to
an association of disciplines. The specific natures of different functions are
accommodated within a general framework which expresses university. In
skyscraper type buildings disciplines tend to be segregated. The relationship
from one floor to another is tenuous, almost fortuitous, passing through
the space-machine-lift. in a groundscraper organization greater possibilities
of community and exchange are present without necessarily sacrificing any
tranquility.” From Candilis-Josic-Woods, original competition panel.
3. Both Georges Candilis and Alexis Josic attributed the Free University
project to Woods. See Gabriel Feld, Interview with Alexis Josic, January
1, 1997, Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, archival
material, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and
Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, Temp. Box. 4.
4. A part of the diagram in Fig. 1. See Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods:
Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 208.
5. Tom Avermaete, Another Modern: The Post-War Architecture and Urbanism of
Candilis-Josic-Woods (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), 15.
6. Avermaete. Another Modern; Kenneth Frampton. Modern Architecture:
A Critical History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992; A. Smithson,
Manfredo Tafuri, and Francesco Dal Co., Modern Architecture, New York:
H.N. Abrams, 1979.
7. Bénédicte Chaljub. Candilis, Josic, Woods. Patrimoine, Centre des Monuments
Nationaux, 2010; Karl Kiem. Die Freie Universität Berlin (1967 - 73) :
Hochschulbau, Team-X-Ideale und Tektonische Phantasie / The Free University
Berlin (1967 - 73) : Campus Design, Team X Ideals and Tectonic Invention.;
Weimar: Verl. und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2008; Gabriel Feld
and Peter Smithson. Free University, Berlin : Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm.
Exemplary Projects, 3. London: Architectural Association, 1999.
8. The article builds on the existing argument by Mohsen Mostafavi,
“Performative Skin,” in Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, 100-103, that the
project insisted on the collaboration between architects and engineers. The
project was the impetus for collaboration between Candilis, Josic, Woods,
and Shiedhelm, who collaborated with Jean Prouvé. In turn, Prouvé’s flexible
panels were the occasion for collaboration among trades. This article focuses
on the architects’ interest in urban planning and social sciences, with the
emphasis on urbanism.
9. Shadrach Woods, “Stem,” Architectural Design 5 (1960): 161; Shadrach
Woods, “Web,” Le Carré Bleu 3 (1962): 4.
10. “Cells” and “cluster” were additional concepts that Candilis, Josic, and
Woods realized in projects. They were developed in drawings and diagrams
for housing in Aulnay Sous Bois, France (1960) and in their competition
entry for semi-urban housing in Algeria (1960). Alison and Peter Smithson
wrote about them in “Cluster City. A New Shape for the Community,” The
Architectural Review (Nov. 1957): 333-336. Since there is no writing that
synthesizes cells and cluster as clear concepts by Shadrach Woods himself,
they are treated as intermediate concepts that led to the development of web.
11. Smithson, Alison M. “How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building;
Mainstream Architecture as It Has Developed Towards the Mat-Building.”
Architectural Design 9 (September 1974): 573.
12. Woods, “Stem,” 161.
13. Woods, “Stem,” 161.
ARRIS 48 § Volume 23 § 2012
14. Avermaete, Another Modern, 234.
15. George Candilis, “À la recherche d’une structure urbaine,” L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui 101 (1962): 51.
16. Candilis, 51.
17. Woods, “Web,” 4.
18. Woods, “Web,” 4.
19. Woods, “Web,” 4.
20. Avermaete, Another Modern, 302.
21. Starting with CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne)
IV on Functional City and continuing with CIAM V, VIII, IX, and X,
participants looked at how architecture can address problems of the city. In
these conferences, the scope of architecture was broadened to include urban
planning.
22. Polis, according to Habermas, is an old model of the city where public life
takes place. The model is no longer valid because people are no longer tied
to a location. See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity:
Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987) 3.
23. Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People (New York: F.A.
Praeger, 1968) 208.
24. Smithson, 573-590.
25. “Mat,” The New International Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the
English Language (Naples, Fl: Trident Press International, 1996).
26. Shadrach Woods, “Berlin – Freie Universität Competition,” Professional
paper, Sept, 1963, Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, 193-
2008, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine
Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 3.
27. Giancarlo de Carlo, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb
1974): 50.
28. Woods, “Berlin – Freie Universität Competition,” 1.
29. Woods, “Berlin – Freie Universität Competition,” 1.
30. Georges Candilis, Alexis Josic, and Shadrach Woods. Project for the Free
University of Berlin, excerpt, Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers,
1923-2008, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and
Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.
31. “Concours pour l’Université Libre de Berlin,” Le Carré Bleu 1, (1964): XLIV.
32. Alison Smithson, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974):
47.
33. Brian Richards, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974):
47.
34. Tom Avermaete, Team 10: 1953-81, in Search of a Utopia of the Present,
ed. Max Risselada and Dirk Heuvel (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), 311.
35. In this lecture, he states: “My premise is that urbanism as we know it
in Europe and North America is a stupendous hoax in global terms….
When our predecessors, in the first third of the century, were re-inventing
architecture and urbanism, they were also occasionally, and rightly,
presenting themselves as being exemplary of social consciousness in their
time….However, in most Europe and all of America, inequality, exploitation,
waste and poverty did not too much intrude upon their area of concern,
which was usually essentially esthetic, that is, an abstraction of the total
scene. It was at this time that the esthetics of social concern were invented;
these considerations grazed but did not penetrate (even within the white
world) the real problems of social and economic disparity. It was, in a way,
like being against war, but only because one found the flags and the uniforms
to be somehow overstated.” See Shadrach Woods, “The Incompatible
Butterfly,” Eighth Gropius Lecture at Yale University, May, 1968, Shadrach
Woods Architectural Records and Papers, archival material, Department of
Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia
University, New York, 1-2.
 draft Dina Krunic

36. The sketch “Play Brubeck” by Peter Smithson was published in Team 10
Primer with the following caption “Ideogram of net of human relations. P.D.
S. A constellation with different values of different parts in an immensely
complicated web crossing and recrossing. Brubeck! A pattern can emerge.” It
was also published in “How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building” by Alison
Smithson.

37. Alison and Peter Smithson in George Candilis, Alexis Josic, and Shadrach
Woods, “The Free University and the language of modern architecture,”
Domus 534 (Mar. 1974): 1.

38. O. M. Ungers, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974):

46.

39. Bryan Richards, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974):

47.

40. Serge Chermayeff, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb

1974): 48.

41. O. M. Ungers, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974):

46.

42. “Hence, for Candilis-Josic-Woods the design of a city or a university was not
solely a matter of the design of collective space, but rather of the installation
of a basis that could accommodate varied and nuanced relationships between
the individual and the collective realm. A university or a city consists of
‘places for individual – places for group, tranquility and activity, isolation
and exchange.’” See Avermaete, Another Modern, 318.

43. Architects’ Statement in Gabriel Feld. Architectural Association: Exemplary

Projects 3: Berlin Free University: Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm (London:
AA Publications, 2004), 25.

44. Shadrach Woods, The Man in the Street: A Polemic on Urbanism (Baltimore:
Penguin Books, 1975), 25.

45. A part of the diagram in Fig.1. See Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for
People, 208.

46. Woods, The Man in the Street, 11-­13.

47. Quote spacing, ampersands, and italics are as they appear in the magazine.
Shadrach Woods, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974):
51.

Volume 23 § 2012 § ARRIS 49